Friday, November 1, 2013

In fact, putting an excessive burden on the federal government was the explicit aim of the law’s opponents. “Congress authorized no funds for federal ‘fallback’ exchanges,” the Tea Party Patriots website noted as long ago as last December. “So Washington may not be able to impose exchanges on states at all.” The group went on to suggest that since Washington was not equipped to handle so many state exchanges, “both financially and otherwise — this means the entire law could implode on itself. Todd S. Purdum, Politico

Anyone who knows me knows I have been blaming Republicans for the problems with Obamacare knowing some State Governors like Oklahoma's Mary Fallin, pulled back at the last minute. It just made sense it would put an extra burden on the main site. Lo and behold that is just what happened.

The lowlife, underhanded GOP sabotaged the rollout of ACA and then criticized it for having problems. Despicable, lying, overpaid, lazy, and arrogant Republican members of Congress are going to find out the Democrats they are dealing with today are not the rollover types and are willing to stand up to the lying GOP like Rep Pallone of New Jersey. This may be one of the funniest exchanges I have seen from the House in a long time. I applaud Rep Pallone for standing up and not backing down.

For weeks I’ve been wondering why no one is talking about how Republicans sabotaged the ACA rollout by refusing to implement state run marketplaces, and thus unexpectedly forcing all of that additional burden on to the federal website.

But today, Todd Purdum at Politico exposed how Republicans sabotaged the ACA rollout. One small part of their plan was the rejection of the state run exchanges.

But also, Purdum points out, Republicans refused to fund the extra work on the website after the states refused to do their parts, leaving the administration to cobble funding together for Healthcare.Gov. Putting this extra burden on the website was a deliberate effort to cause the law to “implode” on itself.

When I saw the above on Politicususa, it all made sense and answered my questions on how the lowlife Republicans caused the problems and then blamed President Obama. The theory was correct that the MSM was complicit with Republicans and hard right in the lies about the ACA rollout refusing to get to the heart of the problems and took to blaming the Obama Administration. Daily we see the MSM reporting the GOP narrative on ACA as facts with some reporters actually saying it is not their job to determine the truth like Chuck Todd and Lisa Myers of NBC. If a reporters job is not to report the facts, then he should go to work for Fox News where facts and truth rarely see the light of day.

The excerpted article by Politico is outstanding as Purdum put the facts together and shows how a real investigative reports works. Great knowing there are still some around today -- his full article is well worth the read:

To the undisputed reasons for Obamacare’s rocky rollout — a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance — add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step.

That may sound like a left-wing conspiracy theory — and the Obama administration itself is so busy defending the indefensible early failings of its signature program that it has barely tried to make this case. But there is a strong factual basis for such a charge.

From the moment the bill was introduced, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress announced their intention to kill it. Republican troops pressed this cause all the way to the Supreme Court — which upheld the law, but weakened a key part of it by giving states the option to reject an expansion of Medicaid. The GOP faithful then kept up their crusade past the president’s reelection, in a pattern of “massive resistance” not seen since the Southern states’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

But the bitter fight over passage was only the beginning of the war to stop Obamacare. Most Republican governors declined to create their own state insurance exchanges — an option inserted in the bill in the Senate to appeal to the classic conservative preference for local control — forcing the federal government to take at least partial responsibility for creating marketplaces serving 36 states — far more than ever intended.

Then congressional Republicans refused repeatedly to appropriate dedicated funds to do all that extra work, leaving the Health and Human Services Department and other agencies to cobble together HealthCare.gov by redirecting funds from existing programs. On top of that, nearly half of the states declined to expand their Medicaid programs using federal funds, as the law envisioned.

Then, in the months leading up to the program’s debut, some states refused to do anything at all to educate the public about the law. And congressional Republicans sent so many burdensome queries to local hospitals and nonprofits gearing up to help consumers navigate the new system face-to-face that at least two such groups returned their federal grants and gave up the effort. When the White House let it be known last summer that it was in talks with the National Football League to enlist star athletes to help promote the law, the Senate’s top two Republicans sent the league an ominous letter wondering why it would “risk damaging its inclusive and apolitical brand.” The NFL backed off.

The drama culminated on the eve of the open enrollment date of Oct. 1. Congressional Republicans shut down the government, disrupting last-minute planning and limiting the administration’s political ability to prepare the public for the likelihood of potential problems, because it was in a last-ditch fight to defend the president’s biggest legislative accomplishment.

“I think my Republican colleagues forget that a lot of people are enrolling through state exchanges, rather than the federal exchange,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) noted last week. “And if it wasn’t for the fact that many Republican governors, including my own,” failed to set up state exchanges, “then we wouldn’t be putting so much burden on the federal system.”

In fact, putting an excessive burden on the federal government was the explicit aim of the law’s opponents. “Congress authorized no funds for federal ‘fallback’ exchanges,” the Tea Party Patriots website noted as long ago as last December. “So Washington may not be able to impose exchanges on states at all.” The group went on to suggest that since Washington was not equipped to handle so many state exchanges, “both financially and otherwise — this means the entire law could implode on itself.”

The way some of the media is attacking President Obama over ACA shows how much they are in bed with the GOP. For years we have heard that the MSM is liberal when he fact they are controlled by mostly conservative organizations who frankly don't like the President because he doesn't do favors for the wealthy like Republicans. President Obama actually cares about regular people not just the top 2%.

For years I have been told by some Republicans to blame the opposition for what you are doing. My reaction was to say you have to be kidding because you will be found out but they weren't. They even defunded ACORN after it had been destroyed. How much of the voter fraud attributed to ACORN came from the GOP?

At least the answers are out about ACA and once again just like Benghazi, the fault lies with the lack of GOP funding ACA websites while they blame Obama and the Democrats. Politico and Politicususa made my day with these revelations. About time someone tells the truth because you are not going to get it from much of the MSM who are too lazy to investigate anything except where their next meal is coming from and who they can get to pay for that meal.

1 comment:

Oh all, so what, it's just Obama. The Koch Brothers are happy. Nothing else really matters, does it? After all, we can't have women going around getting free health care like the far right male gets his free Viagra.